Becoming a Handy Man

Don’t buy a house unless you want to put in long nights, weekends and blood sweat and tears into it. Scratch that, don’t buy a 120 year old house….
Some of the projects that I have completed in the last 4 months.
-Painted entire house (Paneling & Cabinets)
-New Front Door (2)
-Remove Mold
-Sheetrock
-Clean out a flooded basement
-Insulate a 3 foot high crawl space (I am 6′3″)
-New Windows (2)
-Remove Carpet
-Put down Laminate
-Tile a bathroom
-Fix a leaking bathtub/sink
-Cut down trees & shovel 10 inches of snow
-Refinish a Bath-tub
The last 4 months have been busy but I will add pictures and go through some of these projects step by step

Becoming a Landlord

So if you have read my blog or know me at all, you know I love real estate and the idea of owning an asset and having other people pay for it. “But what about the clogged toilets and leaky basements and problem tenants?” I know many people do not want to become a landlord and that is nice for me – less competition. To be honest, it is hard. There is a lot of responsibility, not only the reoccurring mortgage payment but you are also responsible for providing housing for other people. Also the thought of vacancy scares the crap out of people. Cailen and I were lucky. Craigslist was a great resource and we were able to rent out our apartments 75% by December (2 months in) and 100% in February. We had someone pay 1/2 rent for two months to hold one of the apartments. The upstairs, 1 bedroom apartment, has a great tenant in there who is routinely making repairs and taking care of the place. The downstairs, 2 bedroom apartment, has a younger couple who are living together for the first time. 100% rented for at least a year. That means the Mortgage is FULLY covered. I can repay my parents for the down payment and still have room to pay for taxes and insurance. My advice to all is buy assets and have other people pay for them!

2010

For many people 2009 was not a good year. For me, it seemed that 2009 was not a good year because of everything I was reading and hearing from people. However when looking back on the past year, I was incredibly blessed. I graduated a great private college (Muhlenberg) and gave the 2009 baccalaureate speech. I found an okay paying job 2 days after graduation and have been employeed for 7 months now with a great company who believes in their employees. I was able to purchase my first home and investment property, a three unit house near Doylestown PA. My girlfriend and I were able to adopt an adorable little American Eskimo dog named Olive. 2009 was a great year for myself and I am just as excited for many big things to come in 2010.

The Oprah Effect

CNBC just aired the Oprah Effect tonight (Thursday) documenting the effect Oprah has on entrepreneurs and business owners. Some stats on Oprah: she receives 44 million viewers a week, just on her show, not counting her magazine. In 1996 Oprah starts the Oprah Book Club. This was revolutionary in talk show times when most day time talk shows were considered peddlers of trash, Oprah went against the fray and touted literacy and classic novels. This is sometimes credited as saving the publishing industry! CNBC highlighted three company's that received the Oprah Effect. I will quickly overview each one:
-"Carol's Daughters": went from 200 visitors to 14,000 visitors in 45 seconds once aired on the show, 2 million to 20million in sales and grew 500% in 3 years because of Oprah.
-"We Take The Cake": Went from a profit of $19 (not a type-0, less than $20) Once aired on Oprah, within moments, sales double and grow to $1 million a year.
-"LAFCO" (Luxury articles and Fragrance Company): Spent 7 years sending Oprah samples, finally got on the show. Spent $15,000 on Oprah's audience for giveaways. Sales peak at $1million in 30 days

The evidence is monumental, if you get on Oprah let me tag along! Here is the the link to send your ideas to Oprah to get started. https://www.oprah.com/ord/plugform jsp?plugId=216

Good Luck and let me know what you think would do well on Oprah

Power of positive thinking part 2

Here is an update on my job search. An offer from Bank 2, Mortgage company and now a meeting tomorrow with a property management company that I dropped my resume off at. Now I know that a meeting does not mean an offer but hey I think this is pretty cool. More action than I thought I was going to get after college =) The real meat of this post though is an ode to my girlfriend and her business practices. Every time she gets a lead with her business, she writes down the leads name on a list that she sees everyday under the heading of "Client", which they are not yet. So far out of this positive thinking client list, she has converted 4 out of 6 in to actual paying clients. I think that it is pretty cool that she "thinks as if" and for whatever reason these potential clients gravitate towards her and end up using her services. I know many of you would think this has nothing to do with success, and maybe it doesn't, but does it hurt?

-Again, put in the work & the money will follow
Good Luck

The letter of the day is K and the number is 45

Invest in what you know. I wanted to put this to use so I asked my girlfriend to come up with a company that she would like to own. Kashi, she said. When I asked her why, she said that she eats their cereal every day and that they have good commercials. Fine enough for me. So I did some research and found out that Kashi isn't publicly traded per se but their parent company is, Kellogg Company. Kellogg Company is a household name in many families and that is a good thing. Their stock has gotten beaten up over the last year moving from a high of $58 to a low of $35. I actually would agree with my girlfriend and put a buy/watch on Kellogg, trading right now at $43.23. It seems based on the charts that there is a resistance level around $45 and that it is in an upward trend. I would think that if it breaks the resistance level, which it has tested 3 times, it could easily climb back up to its 52 week high of $58. I also like Kellogg because in buying Kashi they are investing in healthier more organic food which is starting to get an upswing in popularity. Kellogg just recently put out a survey that Americans are not getting their recommended source of fiber, which is important in a diet and guess what - Kellogg products can help with that.

Overall, watch Kellogg (a buy at $43 and a buy especially if it drops to $40) Americans are more conscious about health which is good and they deliver a good product, which young Americans gravitate towards.

-Good Luck and let me know what you think.

Power of positive thinking

Use the power of positive thinking (but cover your bases). I am a big proponent of positive thinking, but you can't sit around and just think positively. Case in point, I just graduated college and had three quality leads for a job. Bank 1, Bank 2, and Mortgage Company. I gave myself a week after school to get organized and set forth job hunting, even though I had three leads. During that week Bank 1 said they were looking for more experience. Monday rolls around and I hit the pavement, literally and dropped off resumes at different establishments. The whole time, morning and night I knew one of the other offers would come through. Tuesday rolls around and again nothing, so I hit the pavement, staying positive and pushing on. Tuesday afternoon I get a call, Bank 2 wants to offer me a position, Jackpot - "I am employed". Tuesday night rolls around and the mortgage company calls, saying they would like to give me an offer. This is great, I go from unemployed living in my girlfriends parents house to being sought after! Moral of the story, even if the positive thinking didn't work out, I was covering my ass by going out and putting in the time to look for and secure another job. I leave you with this -

Put in the work and the money will follow

-Good Luck

invest in what you know

Invest in what you know (or pay someone else to do it for you). Throughout the weeks I will try to give you sound financial advice, picking a stock and letting you know my recommendation, which I will explain in depth. However you should always invest in what you know. For example, based on the recommendation of someone I know, I bought in to this bio pharmaceutical stock about 4 years ago. I know nothing about bio pharmaceuticals. I had an extra thousand dollars that I wanted to play with and see how I could do so I loaded up on this one stock at a price of about $22. Over the next four years the stock made it to $25 and then dive bombed (not because of the economy) and is now hovering around 0.32 cents. That was a great return! So as this story shows, I could give you all the reasons in the world to buy something but in the end you should do your own research and compare it to what I (and other people) are saying. By the way, if I am totally off on my research let me know.

Also, market timing is great, but the best thing is just getting in to the game. One of my buddies just emailed me this morning with a fund he got in to. He bought in to the fund right after the worst 3 months of the year and right before the best 3 months. Pretty cool but he had no freaking idea he was doing that.

So do some research, EDUCATE yourself and get in the game.

Good luck